Conventional wireless data communications between a wireless communication device and a network based server lack the dependability and speed demanded by the increasingly sophisticated applications that run on wireless communication devices today or are deployed in the field as a specific purpose wireless device and accessed via a wireless communication network. For example, wireless communication devices are installed in thousands of electric meters across the country to help shed load for the utility. However, to be effective, these remote devices need to be quickly accessible to receive instructions via the wireless communication network.
Current methods of communicating with a remote wireless device include sending an SMS command message or making a voice call to the remote device. Once the remote device receives the command it can respond with a SMS message or initiate a socket data call to the server. SMS by design is a best effort, with no guarantee of delivery and one significant drawback of using SMS is that SMS delivery times can vary from seconds to hours. Voice calls are fast, but are not cost effective and do not allow for any efficient method of data transfer.
In practice, the SMS to SMS technique requires that the server send an SMS message to the remote device and the remote device responds with an SMS message. Because SMS uses best effort delivery the delivery times can vary from seconds to hours. An additional drawback of SMS to SMS messaging is that the length of each SMS message is limited to between 100 and 180 bytes of user data.
Similarly, the SMS to socket technique requires that the server send an SMS message to the remote device and the remote device responds by opening a socket connection to the server. A drawback of opening a socket is that the socket maintenance (opening and closing the socket) creates overhead on the remote device and is time consuming. One advantage of the SMS to socket technique over the SMS to SMS technique is that the socket allows for up to 1500 bytes of data to be sent in each message.
Finally, the Voice to SMS (or socket) technique requires that the server place a voice call to the remote device and the remote device responds by sending an SMS message or opening a socket connection to the server. While conceptually better since the time required for the voice call is short relative to an SMS message, it is not implemented in practice because carriers dislike the added traffic on the voice network for data centric devices. Additionally, the costs associated with the voice calls are prohibitively expensive. Accordingly, the industry has a need for a solution that overcomes these significant problems found in conventional data communications between a wireless communication device and a network based server as described above.